


stay here honey i don't wanna share

by mcmeekin



Category: Power Rangers S.P.D.
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad Parenting, Character Study, Literal Sleeping Together, Multi, Polyamory, Team Dynamics, Z-Centric, lapslock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-07-18 12:33:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16118540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcmeekin/pseuds/mcmeekin
Summary: spd ot5 falling in love and making it work, with a little bit of a character study of z.(aka b-squad keeps sleeping in the same bed, and z knows this is a bad idea.)





	stay here honey i don't wanna share

**Author's Note:**

> hi welcome to chiles
> 
>  
> 
> please forgive me if none of this makes sense i just had a Whole Emotion and needed to express it.
> 
> just a pro tip, since i had to look this up: zentor is the planet where the swat mission happened. u are welcome.
> 
> also no offense but approximately EVERYONE should be writing spd ot5 fanfic. excuse me. where is everyone. this is important. 
> 
> (there's no sam here bc i literally forgot about him until i was posting this. ily sam im so sorry. i just love u less than the rest of b-squad. bye)
> 
> (yes the title is from a taylor swift song bc i know what im ABOUT)

z likes to think that she gives her family a fair shot to love her before she runs away.

 

and she thinks maybe they did, once. love her, that is. before she started replicating without warning or control. she was young when it started, so she’s not quite sure she remembers a time before it. maybe she does, but all her memories are tinged white around the edges, like she may have made them up. her mom smiling at her over the dinner table. her dad kissing her forehead as he tucks her in.

maybe she just wishes those things to be true of her family, back when she was normal. maybe she was never normal, and they never loved her like that. the memories she knows are real are never as soft. her dad screaming at her or shaking her. her mom crying and not looking at her. feeling cold when she slept no matter how many blankets she piled on top of herself. she used to lay in bed and beg (god? the universe? alien life? whoever will listen) for everything to be okay. for school to be normal. for her parents to love each other. for just one friend. nobody ever answers.

anyway, she thinks she stuck it out for a good long time, considering. it’s when she figures out how to control the replicating and her mom still cries that she figures it’s time to make herself scarce. running away isn’t quite the right word for what she does that day. how do you run from something that isn’t chasing you? she’ll figure it out, once she stops to catch her breath.

she finds herself asking the ambiguous universe again that night, sitting on a street corner. asking just one more favor. _please. please i just want my family to care enough to come looking for me._

she finds out much later, searching through the spd database, that they never even reported her missing.

fuck the universe.

 

her heart is a motel, a revolving door of patrons who forget their stay as soon as they’re gone but leave messes that take too long to clean. jack checks in at age 10, and she forgets to charge him for his stay. or maybe he was never a guest. more like an overpaid manager who bullies the bellhops.

whatever. he keeps her warmer at night than the streets had been.

 

(she knows she loves him by age 15, but the last thing she loved didn’t turn out too well, so she keeps it to herself.)

 

everyone knows that b-squad fits together like parts from completely separate machines. especially at first, they argue more than they breathe. what bands them together the most in the end is the shared sense of eyes on them. it’s not just paranoia, or the feeling of grumm hovering, because other members of spd will openly stare at them all the way down the hallways. mostly newer recruits or departments they don’t work with as much, but it still happens often enough to cause discomfort. whispers trail after them through the mess hall, so they start taking their meals on their floor. they’re pointedly ignored by other recruits in the training rooms, so they start training at odd hours when they know no one else will be there.

it’s worse because they know it’s not just because they have two criminals on their team. it’s not just because they’re the active rangers. it’s not just because of perceived favoritism or relationship status gossip or hero worship or any normal thing to point and talk about. it’s because they’re mutants, and nobody really knows what to do with that.

 

( _every one of us, especially you, is a freak of nature,_ sky tells her early on in no uncertain terms. she notices that he uses his powers the least out of all of them. wonders if his parents loved him the way hers loved her.)

 

it’s not like it was in school for z, where there was open judgement and ridicule, but she suspects that the fact that they outrank the whole building while a-squad is gone has a lot to do with that. but still. there’s nothing like everyone else wanting nothing to do with you to band a group of people together.

 

and they’ve always been overly tactile compared to other groups of friends, but z swears she read in an spd manual somewhere about the grid amplifying the need for teammates to be physically close. or something. and even if that’s not true, it’s nice to have a physical reminder of her teammates being there for her, especially when it feels like no one else on the base is. a hand at the small of her back out in the field. fingers intertwined with hers on the way back. a kiss pressed into her hair after dinner.

a warm body in her bed at night.

 

the bed sharing starts innocuously enough. spd headquarters is, shockingly, much colder than the streets had been. when she first moves in, she’s tempted to send duplicates running around looking for a thermostat, because honestly it’s unacceptable. it occurs to her dimly that maybe she’s just too used to jack’s warmth next to her when she sleeps, but she’d rather blame the absurd amount of air conditioning.

it isn’t until a night a couple months into their b-squad tenure when syd is off visiting her parents that jack first sneaks into her bed. she grumbles about his cold feet but allows him access without much more fuss. she wakes up to him pressed up against her back and the sound of the door closing behind syd. there’s a moment of sleep-hazed panic as she expects syd to assume more torrid things had happened last night, but her worry is misplaced. syd just throws her coat on the ground and lies down face-first into her own bed, without a spare glance towards z and jack. she only greets jack after the training alarm goes off, and jack grunts at her in reply, refusing to rouse himself for a full ten more minutes.

 

(and z finds that the longer she rooms with syd, the more she gets to know post-parental visit syd. post-parental visit syd is less…vivid. more toned down. like syd in sepia tones. less likely to make pointed comments about people sharing beds unexpectedly. less quick to make biting comments. less herself. z doesn’t like post-parental visit syd very much.)

 

jack comes by to sleep more often after that night. and one night, after a hard day, syd pushes her bed over and joins them.

 

(syd doesn’t move her bed back.)

 

so it starts with jack, then syd. and then zentor happens. the shift in the air after that mission is almost tangible. she’s not sure she could pinpoint the exact moment her feelings for her team as a whole shifted, if pressed, but that day she presses a kiss against syd’s cheek and her lips come away tingling.

and that night, sky helps jack pull his bed into the girls’ room to press up against syd’s. they all pile in the new mega bed together.

it’s hard to go back to sleeping by themselves after that, so they don’t.

 

z tries to categorize her feelings about them the way she categorizes their sleeping habits, but it’s not as easy.

 

syd doesn’t like to sleep with the light off. she likes soft nightlights bathing her room at night or the whisper of artificial candlelight kissing across her skin. she likes to sleep with the curtains open so the full moon can sing her to sleep. it’s two weeks after zentor that z realizes syd just likes the light because she wants to see z’s face as she falls asleep. realizes that syd just doesn’t like to sleep in a room alone. realizes syd likes to cling to someone while she sleeps. realizes if she kisses each of syd’s eyelids, she’ll fall asleep faster.

 

sky can’t fall asleep without counting. _sheep?_ z would tease before. before zentor and before she felt him tap out the numbers against her back, just barely there, with his fingertips. _what do you count?_ she finally asks. _confirmed arrests_ , he says one night. another he taps against the headboard and mutters, _crybots from today_. another, when his arms are encircled around her, he taps against his wrist where a certain bracelet had imprisoned him and whispers against the back of her neck, _days without him._

 

bridge dreams in colors and sounds and sometimes visions of the future. z gets used to waking up to him drenched in sweat and panting before informing her of something useless, like that jack would stub his toe later. she gets used to rolling over and kissing the crease out from between his eyebrows, gets used to telling him in soothing words that it isn’t urgent, isn’t life or death, isn’t going to matter if jack doesn’t know right now about his impending toe stub. gets used to running her fingers through his hair until he falls back asleep. gets used to lying awake long after he returns to dreamland, wishing she could keep him like this forever.

 

and then there’s jack. jack, who smiles and laughs and jokes and pranks all day, but at night he can’t seem to get the uniform off fast enough, shower the smells of the day away fast enough, pull her close and pretend it’s just them on the street again fast enough. jack who grumbles into her shoulder _this is the life you asked for_ as the emergency alarm wakes them up at 3am for an attack, and he sounds like he’s joking, but she flinches under the accusation. because she knows he hates it here. knows he can’t wait for this to be over so he can never put the uniform on again. knows he only stays out of obligation to her and, more recently, to the rest of b-squad.

(knows she’s too selfish and too in love to tell him that he can leave.)

 

nobody sleeps alone anymore on b-squad, and it sounds almost like a confession when she thinks about it, but z is not sure what she’s confessing to. maybe how hard she’s falling. maybe how she sees them look at each other, look at her.

maybe how badly she knows this is going to end.

 

(because jack is going to leave, sky doesn’t remember how to be in love the right way, syd can’t shake her parents off no matter how they treat her, bridge can’t stop the future from haunting him, she can’t stop giving out her heart to anyone who asks for it and can’t clean up the messes they leave behind).

 

she lies on what’s left of the roof of spd headquarters, the night after it all ends, staring up at the moon. _i don’t want to give them back_ , she thinks, furious at herself for getting this attached in the first place. she knows better. knew better. she’s never asked the universe for anything, since that day running away, but she thinks now might be a good time to forgive and forget and ask again. _i love them, and i want to keep them,_ she tells the night sky. the stars blink back at her, silent as ever.

the next day jack resigns, and she wonders if the universe if just laughing at her, at this point.

 

but life goes on. dust settles, b-squad is still b-squad (minus one, but they’re pretending it doesn’t matter, for some reason).

and then there’s a night, soon after the end. (they sleep alone, after jack leaves). she finds a yellow key under her pillow, one of the old kinds that open deadbolts. _what kind of building still has deadbolts in it?_ she wonders vaguely.

the sticky note attached to it just says _with love from jack_ and an address.

 

jack’s apartment is 0.9 meters away from spd headquarters. that’s about a 2 minute walk. 1 minute run. 30 second motorcycle ride.

 

the key doesn’t actually go to the apartment, but the fingerprint access keypad recognizes her and lets her in. she figures the key was just jack being dramatic, which is fine. he’s allowed to be a little dramatic after saving the world. he isn’t home. she contemplates leaving a duplicate to wait on him, since she’s technically on call for the night but decides against it. it’s the real her that falls asleep waiting for jack to come home (always, always waiting on jack), but z figures the others can call her if they need a duplicate tonight (not that her duplicates aren’t the real her but…technicalities and all that).

z wakes up to a moonlight filled bedroom with a warm body she immediately recognizes as bridge pushed up against her back, a head full of curls she realizes is syd in her face, sky’s head in her lap, and her own head in jack’s lap as he cards his fingers through her hair.

_what--?_ she starts, blearily, but jack puts his hand over her mouth to quiet her, presumably to prevent her from waking the others. she blinks up at him, trying to put her question in her eyes. he smiles back down at her, resuming his hair-petting.

instead of answering her question, he asks, _do you think i bought a big enough bed?_ his voice is low enough not to wake the others.

_how did they—_ she is interrupted again, this time from sky down in her lap. she hadn’t realized he was awake, but his voice isn’t scratchy like they woke him. _he gave us fucking color coded keys_ , he mutters into her thigh.

she looks up at jack again, but he’s only looking at sky, his expression distant and fond. jack whispers, slightly louder, _sorry it couldn’t be engagement rings, but i actually just quit my job, so. tight budget and all that._

sky swats at him vaguely, not looking up from her lap. _shh. sleep now. feelings talk later. as team leader, i don't want to deal with the other two pouting if we leave them out._

_yeah, yeah. go back to sleep you big baby._ jack rolls his eyes and smiles down at z. hesitantly, she smiles back, her chest feeling full to the brim.

 

(her heart is a motel, and the smiles her team shares with her in the morning say _no vacancy, no vacancy, no vacancy_.)

**Author's Note:**

> comment if u also felt a Whole Emotion
> 
> hmu on twitter @katmanxs or on tumblr @ powerprincesses or just astral project ur thoughts into the netherworld and i'll find them somehow. 
> 
> now go forth and write spd ot5 fic u heathens


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